Well what can i say about this year? My fourth year in recovery and my first actively sharing my story with friends, family and a few strangers on the internet.
I keep saying it but this blog was never meant to be an addiction recovery blog. It turned into one very quickly and I’m glad it did. I honestly cant say whether i thought this is how it would pan out because when i look back at writing my first blog i really don’t know what my intentions were.
I knew i had a problem with wasting money. I was spending money on things i did not need and it had got to the point where new purchases were being sent straight to the loft as i had no more room to store them. Trainers, sports gear and video games were the main concern along with sports trading cards and books to a lesser degree. At one point had two pairs of trainers ready to buy in various online shopping baskets only for a quick inventory check to inform me that I owned both of them already. Luckily they had not made it to the loft yet and were visible in the spare room. I could have purchased those shoes, probably for ÂŁ100, and not realised i owned two pairs of both for years to come.
You see the problem was that i did not even wear my new purchases very often and i had began to realise that i was most likely replacing my alcohol addiction with a purchasing one. In my head i would always justify a purchase with the reasoning that i did not drink anymore and therefore deserved some treats in life. What’s the point of being sober if i cannot enjoy a few luxuries in life? Probably a fair thought process when it comes to a new pair of winter shoes once the cold season arrives. Certainly fair enough when an old pair of running shoes finally plod their final miles and it probably is not too bad practice to have three or four pairs of running shorts for the sweaty summer months but i had taken things beyond the extreme. Multitudes of shoes, shorts and socks stashed away and forgotten about. Every few weeks another shopping bag of new kit would surreptitiously find its way into the loft while my wife was out leaving me just enough room downstairs to make another sports direct order.
Looking back on this behaviour i do think it was different to my alcoholism in a sense that i was not aiming or deciding to deceive those closet to me. By stashing things in the loft i was not hiding them like i did my empty alcohol bottles but of course there are also similarities. I did on occasion plan deliveries around no one being in and with certain more expensive purchases i would hide them and reveal them in weeks to come with an excuse like “these old things” or “no I’ve had these years”.
Reading the above paragraph back its actually quite clear i was deceiving people. Writing things down like this often makes sense of things and I’ve just experienced that myself.
The main thing was that after my wife had been in the loft and we realised just how much “stock” I’d accumulated i could start to make positive changes in my life. When back after bag of clothing was passed down the loft hatch i laughed, when box after box of new footwear followed made a few nervous jokes and then when yet more bags of still packaged new clothes followed i became shocked, more than a little embarrassed and slightly upset with myself. This was a problem and what lay before us in the hallway of the newly extended upstairs must have represented £1000 of completely unnecessary purchases!!
I wont bore you with anymore details. If you want to look back at some of my earliest blogs they will detail this time in my life but safe to say I realised i needed to change. I had held myself accountable in a small way by outlining this in what turned out to be my first ever blog!!!
https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srhid8
👆first ever blog
Wow its been ages since i read that first short piece of writing. I actually forgot that I mentioned my alcoholism and anxiety in the very first blog but i did and boy am i glad. I remember how my middle brother Paul sent a tweet out after I’d published it via a shared link on twitter. I cannot remember the exact words he used but it was something along the lines of how this was one thing on twitter he wont take the piss out of. It did not last long but that small reprieve from the social media banter was wonderful 🤣. Paul’s response was one of many positive replies to that post along with multiple messages of support an d private messages wishing me well. More than one person got in touch to offer their apologies for not realising my plight and a few people wanted to apologise for potentially facilitating my alcoholism over the years. As i said than and will say again now i was the only person responsible for what happened to me. I was the main protagonist (possibly Mr North also) on most nights out throughout my life and would not have wanted it any other way. People who drank with me over the years did not really drink with Stuart the alcoholic. That Stuart was the last two years on my drinking and some shorter spells in earlier periods of my life that i now look back on a realise were periods of high anxiety and some middle periods of mental trauma. There was a period in the Czech Republic when a long term relationship had ended and a period living in Holland when a combination or loneliness and boredom formed the perfect storm to facilitate alcohol abuse in quite ridiculous amounts.
That was over four years ago now and anyone who has followed my year of blogs will have known there are still a few downs along the way but for the best part life is a much more positive experience now. In the next two days I’m going to outline the plans for the blog and podcast going into 2022 and brainstorm a few ideas for raising some more money for charitable causes.
Thanks for reading. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and is looking forward to an enjoyable New Year’s Eve.
Stu 🎉
Henry Weston's Old Mate 